Graflex - Prize-winning picture.

This ad for Graflex cameras wants you to take up a new hobby. Photography's great. Yes, back in 1948, even hobby-level photography probably meant developing your own pictures, which means you'd need a darkroom and some chemicals and, well, of course it's way simpler now that it's The Future. Duh. That's not news. What is news is the baffling picture they chose to feature in their ad.

"..for prize-winning pictures you need one of the PRIZE WINNING CAMERAS". Fair enough.. "Classical" photography places a barrier of entry in front of the hobby that I imagine eliminated anyone who wasn't pretty determined to be there.  To work a camera, you had to understand what the hell you were doing to a degree that most "photographers" probably don't today. Technology has just made it super simple is all, and that's neither bad nor good, just different than before.

Yes yes, that's not insightful or anything, but beyond the mere challenge of getting a discernible image down on film, there's the challenge of taking a well-composed or interesting picture.

What the hell is this, then? I'm not the Pope of Photography, but I do know a couple things about composition and stuff. Here's a boy behind a screen door, placed dead center in the frame. Kind of makes you cry, right? There must have been a huge pile of photos to choose from. Why this one? It must be artistically important for some reason. Graflex was a camera company, after all. You'd think they would know their shinola about nice picture. Let's just trust that this is a prize-winning picture, or at least prize-worthy, and try to figure out why...

-One in a series of photographs of superchildren by Arnold Pearson. Here, Lightning Rodney is photographed inside his Faraday cage, the only safe way he can interact with his family. Poor Lightning Rodney. So lonely, So positively charged.

-The boy has hidden behind the door, hoping to surprise his mother when she comes in carrying the groceries, including a carton of Faberge' eggs. The photo is significant because it captures the adorable stupidity of childhood: The boy doesn't realize that the eggs represent not only a significant achievement in the jeweler's art but also the  investment of his parents' life savings. His little joke may result in the ruination of the carton of eggs, and his family's future. Also, he's hiding behind a screen door.

-The picture portrays mankind's necessary ties to nature, despite all our pretensions of sophistication. The boy has finished doing his business out in the yard and is ready to come back in and finish writing his sonnet "My Mother, My Apoplexy".

Pope John XXIII - Putting the "man" back in EcuMANical Council.

Joke #1 - In 1962, Pope John XXIII opened the historic Ecumenical Council to address allegations of hypocrisy as regards to  their collective vow of poverty. It was decided that their giant marble statues' hats should merely be made of bronze, as opposed to the more traditional gold.

Joke #2 - "Good news gentlemen.  The passage in Judges 15:7 '... and after that I will cease.' was mistakenly mistranslated from the original Hebrew. The correct translation should be '...and oft times were the male children decietful, crying out for cecassion, when their hearts truly desired for more, and it was good.'"

Joke #3 - "Well I can't tell if he's fallen asleep either! Go on and poke him. Scared? What, are you gonna PRAY him awake?"

Joke #4 - Seemingly assaulted from all sides by the sexual revolution and social decadence, Pope John XXIII, in a little known ceremony in 1962, begins to summon the Kraken from the watery floor of St. Peter's Basilica.

Joke #5 - "I can't belieeve how good thees carrpet is! Soo many wine stains. So many siiins! All wiped up weeth a damp cloth! Eet looks as goood as new! Truly thees ees a miiiiracle! Praise bee to Vatican Carrpets, Inc."

Joke #6 comes from Anonymous. Thanks, Anonymous! - "It was the annual "Men's Red Gown Gala" and Bill's mom had sent him in the brown gown. As he sat in the front row, he wondered "Who would EVER ask him to dance?"

[Commenter jokes will be added to the post.   -Mgmt.]

1963 Pontiac Bonneville - Panoramic purdy.

Today we bring you an especially high-resolution two-page ad for a 1963 Pontiac Bonneville. It had the crotch of the magazine running right through the middle of the car, and while I usually don't take the time to paint those out, I did today.

Today's picture has been lovingly scanned and presented to you on the finest acid-free archival-quality jpeg. Pixel dimensions are 3000 x 1984 - two very good years for video games, I might add. Compression is set to 9, so it won't look too crunchy when you have it printed on your children (I don't want you to regret your decision).

The magazine fold also went straight through the "BONNEVILLE" badge on the grille, which was unfortunate. It had to be P-shopped a bit to make it presentable. That was an interesting challenge, so that little adventure is demonstrated below. First, it was a matter of first fixing the horizontal lines in the grille with the clone tool. Then, I had to build a "B" out of some "O" parts. Then, I noticed some ghosting in the horizontal lines from when the sections of the image were pieced together (The P.A.G. Okidata AdequateScan 620 won't fit a whole copy of Collier's all at once. It has to be done in sections and knitted together). So, those should have been fixed first but there were done last.

While not perfect, the badge looks decent enough at final resolution. This is the benefit of scanning at silly high resolution and fixing it at that stage before dropping the resolution down to final size. It helps to hide your tracks.

Wype - Paint your car like a lazy dope.

Today, we have a chapter from our country's rich history of sexism in advertising.Good thing it's for a product conceived by a dumbass. Wype auto enamel wants you to paint your car with a rag. "Anyone can do beautiful job" ... even a woman!

I feel obligated to wonder how this product could possibly have worked. But, since we live here in The Future, our advanced perspective generally shows us that, if Wype actually worked, it probably would have survived the test of time. Yes, there are good products that fail, but the obvious stupidity of this product coupled with Wype's historical obscurity makes a pretty strong case in favor of the possibility that Wype Corp went under. So sad. (Not really).

This is one of those ads that looks like twenty smaller ads. The Images and Scanning Them technician had to crop carefully. It was hard to tell where the ad ended. Turns out, it's at the edge of the page. Clearly, Wype didn't feel like paying for professional design.

Honestly, you could spend half an hour reading the ad. In every little box or cloud shape the copy seems to start over: "At last! Practically anyone can now paint his car with WYPE!" Then halfway through the page..."WYPE is a new Miracle Enamel for Autos." A little later... "Start making BIG money now! Sell WYPE in cans or...." A little deductive reasoning tells us that these are all drafts of the same ad. When Wype Corp found that, by not hiring a designer, they could save enough money to buy a full page ad, all the rough drafts became "the ad".

How could Wype possibly have worked? Well, it could have possibly worked like shit, which could possibly be why nobody tries to paint their car with a rag any more... I mean with a powder puff. I really reeeeally want to find pictures of sample Wyped cars on the web, but there doesn't seem to be anything, just pictures of the can. Most of the other Google hits seem to be from people who don't know how to spell "wipe". Thank you, Advertising Industry, for intentionally misspelling words in product names for decades, helping America with the Institutionalization of Ignorance project.

Look for these other intentionally misspelled (and highly trade-markable) words in your local market today!

Krazy, Nite, Sooper, Tuff, Ruff, Nukular (Hat tip to George W. Bush!), Cheez, Beaf, Chik'n, Froot, Ched'r, Flipz (and, really, any substitution of the letter "Z" in place of "S"), Leprosee, Fixin's, Gluttiny, Regurg-i-tayt, Ignurance.

Knob Fondler.

Joke #1 - August 1948. The U.S. Air Force begins testing of tactical hors d'oeuvres in the fight against the red Menace. Previously, military-grade canapes and ballistic aperitifs met with initial success, but were found lacking in the face of the Russian "tapas threat". This was the American military's last-ditch effort in the most delicious, but not too filling, stage of the cold war.

Joke #2 - August 1985. As widespread pig-killing becomes an ever-greater problem, The U.S. Air Force adopts the "bust a deal and face the wheel" method of court-martial.

Joke #3 - August 1978. The U.S. Air Force's Dungeons and Dragons team begins testing the new MG-1A flight glove for "dice recognition and sensitivity".

Joke #4 - The U.S. Air Force's training of blind pilots was made faster and more thorough with the advent of the "feely wheel". Fatalities due to"Catastrophic Knob Mis-identification" plummeted.

Joke #5 - Tailhook, 1990. A U.S. Naval officer relaxes in a side room , practicing with the "grope-go-round".

Joke #6 comes from Mr/Mrs Anonymous. Thanks, mystery joker! - Mabel started having second thoughts about sending Johnny to military school and the effects it might be having on his OCD after observing the results of asking him to arrange the crudite platter for Thanksgiving dinner.

[Commenter jokes will be added to the post   -Mgmt.]

Multifilter - Stinking up the great outdoors.

"Aaaah. Smell that? That's Nature. That's why I became a tobaccoman. I love the outdoors and fresh, clean air. Y' know, spending all day out in nature like this makes a man a man. And, a man leads with his groin. Let me explain."

"Out here in Nature, a man's got room to spread out. Air out the crotchular region, you know? My junk can't live in a cage like some 'modern men'. Nope. Not me. Not my junk. See this here tobacco corral? I built it with my own two hands. I spent weeks squatting, sawing, re-squatting, hammering, and squatting. Now I can hitch my leg up on it anywhere I want and spread out my thighs, showing the world what God gave me. Lets me kinda... open my legs and think clearer, ya know? Feels like I'm hugging the world with my upper thighs and lower abdomen."

"Multifilter understands. Y'see, when I'm drivin' a herd of tobacco, I don't want my flavor all mucked up with tar. Nope. Not me. I need that stuff filtered out, and nothing but acetate fibers will do. And Multifilter only uses the finest acetate fibers, grown right here in the U S of A, harvested at the peak of freshness. Those dew-picked acetate fibers make Multifilters multi-filtered. It's like inhaling the wind, and you can't get that any other way, and that's a promise. It's like a fresh summer breeze blowing between, around, and through my various portions down below."

"Maybe when you're ready, you'll spread your manly thighs and hitch a leg up on my fence? Come breathe with me. I'll be here, swingin' in the breeze, with Multifilter."

Stinkin' up the Great Outdoors.

Three groovy offers - Thanks, The Seventies!

Our drunken idiot friend The Seventies is back with some wonderful consumer products for us. Thanks The Seventies, for always being both tasteful and well-reasoned! Let's see what you have for us today!

Hey, it's the driveway flame thrower! I remember that from our last post about it. The price has gone up a bit, which is odd, because both ads are from 1971. However, this ad is in color. Models in Abba boots don't work for free you know. The other ad just has a line drawing, and everyone knows artists will work for free if you promise not to shove them into a locker.

I have to admit, I'd like to have one of these flame throwers to keep the P.A.G. plaza clear in winter. I'm sure they're illegal now, right? Google doesn't show any current availability of such an item except for this British Ebay posting. The "buy it now" price is 144 L's, whatever those are.

To show us how easy and possibly safe it is, they show us that pretty Greta can use it while wearing a skirt. Here, she's melting some pesky gravel in her photo studio. "I don't know who keeps bringing it in here and arranging it in a neat path!" she sighs. No matter. Just melt it into liquid hot mag-ma! We in The Future can't have it. The Seventies is such a tease!

The Seventies knows fashion! In 1971, Hush Puppies were the shit. See? An ordinary middle aged sex worker can afford one in each color. The brown suede ones- he has the left AND the right one. That's some life you've got there, Prosperous Male Prostitute (or Steve Carell's dad).

 Last night he wore the patriotic bowling shoe to play squash with a client. Delightfully scandalous! The Seventies knows how to show a lady a good time!

Wow! such sexy language to sell a vinyl envelope of mineral oil and metal dust. If I had one of these, I'd spend hours staring into the depths of it's "exotic red material", waiting for it to stop being so blue. You know what? The blue is in your mind, man! The Seventies knows how to tune in and drop out.

Thanks, The Seventies! Time for your nap.